


oblivion

by theseblueskies



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Fluff and Angst, Jealous Louis, Kid Fic, Louis Tomlinson Pines Over Harry Styles, M/M, Pining, basically harry is a human boy and louis is a ghost boy and it's all very emotional, what a beautiful tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-22
Updated: 2015-04-22
Packaged: 2018-03-24 15:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3774220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theseblueskies/pseuds/theseblueskies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>When you're a ghost, the line between dead and alive becomes blurred, like the edges of the sea washing up on the shore. He doesn't know if he's allowed to call it living, what he does. Maybe</em> existing <em>is more accurate.</em></p><p>AU. Louis is a ghost and Harry is the only one who can see him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	oblivion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Leio_Rossi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leio_Rossi/gifts).



> written for the prompt: harry and louis are both little kids, but one of them is a ghost.
> 
> title taken from the song [oblivion](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PF-_H54mydE) by bastille.
> 
> as is customary for an author’s note, i would like to say thank you to a few lovely people in particular:
> 
> [charlie](http://rimmingprincess.tumblr.com), my dear bro. thank you very much a lot for calming me down multiple times when i was stressing out about deadlines and for always being up for a bit of brainstorming. i love you so much and happy bday!!!
> 
> [mae](http://swiftyspice.tumblr.com), my sunshine. thank you for giving me the extra push i needed to take part in this fic exchange. for that and for you, i am eternally grateful. also, "can you eat macaroni?" is quite possibly the best thing you've ever said.
> 
> [lex](http://dreamscapeswift.tumblr.com), my snow white. thank you for being my shoulder to lean on as i wrote the last few parts of this fic, and for helping me come up with some beautiful words. you impacted this fic way more than you'll ever know.
> 
> [jo](http://louhearted.tumblr.com), my vampire flower. thank you for fangirling over shaun the sheep with me and for taking the time to send me a ton of lengthy emails that literally saved this fic! without you, and i'm not even exaggerating, this would be a 1k puddle of sad ghost louis.
> 
> and thank you as well to leio_rossi for the a+ prompt ideas!! you said "kudos for every tear shed," and while i'm not sure whether you meant happy tears or sad tears, i tried my best to induce both. hopefully i did your prompt justice.
> 
> also, thanks to the mods of this exchange for letting me take an extra day to tie up loose ends. i really really really do appreciate it :)
> 
> i think that's all i can ramble about. hope you enjoy! ♡

_when oblivion_  
_is calling out your name,_  
_you always take it further_  
_than i ever can._

\-- 

Louis can't remember his life before Harry.

When you're a ghost, the line between dead and alive becomes blurred, like the edges of the sea washing up on the shore. He doesn't know if he's allowed to call it living, what he does. Maybe _existing_ is more accurate.

After all, the dictionary definition of a ghost is _the soul of a dead person, a disembodied spirit imagined_. He's there but he's not, nothing but a silhouette of dusty air in the dim light of the attic window.

Louis is the equivalent to a spirit of the dead, a soul without a body to contain him, and as far as he's concerned, being a ghost isn't all it's cracked up to be.

\--

A part of Louis aches with longing every time he looks through the window and out at the world around him, the world he can't set foot in anymore. It's a sheltered part of him that he keeps hidden away for days when the sun is too sad to show its face from behind the clouds, because some days he would give absolutely anything to feel the grass beneath his toes and the wind on his skin again.

Instead, Louis busies himself with watching.

He sits by the window in the attic like he does every day and watches until his eyes become crossed from staring for too long. The birds make it a habit to dance around in the trees every morning and sleep in the hand-painted bird houses the ladies down the street made.

He watches when the big yellow school bus pulls up to Starlit Road every afternoon to let the girls and boys climb off. They all have giddy smiles and shiny shoes, and Louis wishes he could be one of them.

When the sun starts to slip down below the horizon and the sky slowly melts into watercolors, his eyes follow the lines of chimney smoke from the houses across the way as they stretch up up up and dissipate into the sunset like exhales in winter.

The thing he watches for the longest though, by far, is when the sky turns dark and the stars wake up from hibernation to light up and shimmer across the vastness of the sky.

\--

Harry and his family move into the house on Starlit Road on the first Sunday in June, when the trees lining the sidewalks outside are in full bloom and the sun’s rays are shining through the windows, painting squares of light on the hardwood floor. It's Louis' favorite time of the year, when everything out of reach is pretty and gentle and warm.

It's a lonely, lonely life as a ghost, but when the trees outside stretch down to touch the attic window, Louis feels a little less alone.

The attic in this house has always been Louis' safe haven. It's the reason he's always drawn back to it when he disappears. When he was younger, he would hide up in the attic when his parents were too busy arguing and throwing plates against the wall to realize what they were doing to their family.

While his sisters coped with their anger through locking themselves in their closets and screaming into their pillows, Louis would disappear up into the attic with a stack of comic books and the blankets off his bed. The sounds from the kitchen would just barely be able to reach his hiding spot, way up at the very top of the house.

Louis didn't really think of it as a coping mechanism. It wasn't the same as just dealing with the problem; it was more an act of survival than anything else. And it wasn't perfect, since the walls in this house are old and thin, and his mother had a set of vocal chords on her to rival a drill sergeant, but perfect wasn't what Louis was looking for.

He was looking for an escape.

And so he would lie there, reading by the dying light of his flashlight and gazing up at the stars until his house became quiet again. It was the only thing that could calm him down when everything became too much and the ties holding his family together began to fray around the edges and slowly unravel.

\--

He wakes up to the sound of a moving van being switched into reverse. Its loud beeps echo like a shout in the still morning air.

Or, well, he wasn't necessarily sleeping in the first place, because as far as he's concerned, ghosts don't need sleep anyway. Sleep is a metaphorical recharge, and if you're dead, do you use any energy at all?

He chooses to shut his eyes anyway, just to spite the world. When the moon rises over the town every night, he curls up in his usual sleeping space by the picture frames the last family had forgotten to take with them. He holds still and lets the dust settle around him, lets the silence of the attic seep into him like it always did when he couldn't sleep, back when his lungs could still breathe.

It's a meager attempt to try and keep at least one semblance of his old life in tact, and luckily, most of the time, it works.

(In other words, Louis is good at pretending.)

He blinks a few times as his eyes get used to the white daylight. He moves across the floor and sits in his designated place by the window to watch the scene unfold below, where there's a blue car parked out front and a moving van slowly backing up the driveway. It comes extremely close to clipping the mailbox clean off its stand, and Louis laughs.

The very moment the van screeches to a stop, the doors are slid open. More moving men than Louis even thought could fit in there start climbing out, one after the other in a seemingly endless line. One of them unlocks the back of the truck, and the men take turns lifting boxes and marching up the cobblestone path that leads to the house.

The line of cardboard boxes looks like an army of ants from Louis' perch in the top floor. As he watches one of the men awkwardly haul a lamp over the house's threshold, Louis thinks back on the number of times he's witnessed a moving day. He can probably count the number of families since his own who have lived in this house on one of his hands and still have some fingers left over, _that’s_ how low the number is.

More often than Louis would like to admit, the silence in this house is deafening. He squeezes his eyes shut, crosses his fingers, and hopes that this family will stay.

\--

Louis watches everything unfold from his place hidden in the shadows on the second floor landing, around the top of the stairs. He peeks through the gaps under the wooden railing, keeping a mental tab on how many moving men there are. Around eight, he loses track of which ones he's already counted and which ones he's never seen before, and instead he takes to squinting at the family standing by the blue car outside.

At this angle, looking through the open front door, he can just barely see them up to their hips. He ducks down lower onto his knees and holds onto the balusters stretching down from the railing of the staircase. He lets himself lean as far forward as he can to get a closer look without sticking his face between the beams, and watches as the family trails in behind the moving man who's leading the way. Louis counts four people: one man and one woman, one boy and one girl.

The woman is pointing a finger to areas in the living and dining rooms, speaking in hushed tones to the moving man beside her and undoubtedly scouting out the best places to put their furniture. Her husband seems content to stand back and watch everything unfold, just like Louis. In his opinion, the blurs of the moving men coming in and out of their house are far more entertaining than talks of where they want their couch to be.

The girl beside him is perhaps a year or two older than Louis, with brown eyes and long hair as dark as her mother's that she pushes back from her face by setting a pair of glittery sunglasses on top of her head.

She's undoubtedly pretty—Louis won't lie, the entire family is pleasing to the eye, and they look like they've just stepped out of the pages of a magazine—but it's not her that catches Louis' attention. It's the boy.

He has the weirdest hair Louis has _ever_ seen, for starters. Louis didn't know boys could even have hair that curly, had never met a boy who had so many tightly wound ringlets sticking out all over their head as he does. And his eyes, Louis swears he stole them straight off a deer in the headlights, they’re that big. His mouth is too wide and his hands and feet aren't proportional to his skinny arms and legs, and Louis, well—

Louis, ever so good at pretending, can't deny that he's completely mesmerized.

It takes him a moment to notice the black and white cat struggling in the boy's arms. To Louis' amusement, the boy is unfazed, as if this is a common occurrence. He points up at the ceiling and whispers in the cat's ear, with awe dripping from his voice like maple syrup, "Look, Dusty, there's a chandelier!"

His cat, the poor thing, seems to be completely uninterested the words he's saying, too preoccupied with trying to escape from the boy's death grip to care about a fancy light fixture. The boy remains oblivious, staring up at the crystals swaying in the faint breeze from the open windows. The light bounces off of them and into his eyes, and Louis realizes with a jolt of something in his fingertips that they're a forest green.

"Harry," the girl laughs when she catches sight of her brother, placing a calming hand on the cat's back. "Let her down, you donut! She's trying to get away."

The boy—Harry, Louis assumes—pouts, and while their father mumbles a "be nice, Gemma," he relaxes his arms and lets her jump free. Louis watches as the cat scampers away through the maze of boxes.

She nears closer to him as she pads up the stairs, and when she's three steps from the top, she pauses to tilt her head at him curiously. Her yellow eyes narrow and her ears flatten to the top of her head, her tail swishing in a way that is probably meant to be intimidating. Louis stares right back.

After a long moment where neither of them moves, Dusty blinks, realizing that Louis is most definitely not scared of her. Tilting her nose up, she continues on her way. Louis counts it as a win, and starts up a scoreboard in his mind: _Louis—1, Dusty—0._

Louis' attention is drawn back to Harry down below, where he's tugging on his mother's shirt. "Can I follow her?" he's asking, pointing up to where Dusty has just disappeared into one of the bedrooms. His bottom lip is sticking out and his eyes are wide, and Louis is almost positive that no one has ever or will ever be able to deny Harry of anything.

His mother looks down at him with a stressed smile. "Do you know which room is yours?" she asks, "The one with the skylight?" and Harry's nodding enthusiastically before she's even finished her sentence. "Okay," she says, and her smile smooths over into one that's much more genuine. "Go ahead, then. Bring a box up with you, please!"

Harry grabs a box off the floor and awkwardly starts making his way around the giant roll of bubble wrap set in the middle of the entry hall. The way he's walking reminds Louis of his mum when she was eight and a half months pregnant with his sister and the only way she could walk comfortably was if she waddled like a penguin.

Gemma tries and fails to hide her laughter behind the back of her hand, and Harry sticks his tongue out at her over his shoulder as he reaches the foot of the stairs.

Louis watches as he carefully takes one step at a time, his spatial perception altered substantially thanks to the heavy box in his arms. Louis can just make out the words _Harry's Room_ scrawled messily along the cardboard sides in black marker, and Louis bets that Harry labelled it himself.

The closer Harry gets to him, the more his features materialize and the tighter Louis' fists curl around the beams of the stairs. He's just so very nice to look at, and there's no mistaking the way Louis' eyes are glued to Harry and his brain feels all fuzzy, all because of this boy's truly angelic face.

Louis dazedly thinks that Harry could win awards with a face like that.

Harry stumbles, the toe of his sneaker scuffing on the top step. A tiny huff is pushed out from his lips as his arms tighten around the box, his hands gripping the edges and trying desperately not to drop it. He pauses on the landing with a squeak of his shoes to catch his breath.

"You okay?" his sister's voice sounds from downstairs, and Louis snaps out of the daze he'd been in while staring at Harry's hair. He blinks, feeling faintly embarrassed when he remembers that there are other people who exist in the world besides the pretty, clumsy boy in front of him.

"Yeah, Gem," Harry calls back, and steadies the box in his arms. "Steep steps, that's all."

When Harry has reached the doorway to the room Dusty had gone into without showing any signs of seeing Louis at all, Louis thinks he's in the clear. He's about to breathe a sigh of relief when Harry looks up, unwavering and bright-eyed, and focused solely on him.

"Hi, Ghosty," he says with a smile.

A rush of heat floods Louis' face, his stomach swoops low in his belly, and before he knows it, he's back up in the attic and staring at the wall, his chest heaving with phantom breaths.

Despite his attempts to stop it, a new mental scoreboard appears beside the other in his head, big and flashing like a neon sign.

_Harry—1, Louis—0._

If there's one thing Louis knows for sure, it's that where Harry's involved, he's absolutely, positively, one hundred per cent a goner.

He might as well be digging his own grave.

\--

After Louis has calmed himself down by watching the children across the street chalk out hopscotch squares on the sidewalk and admiring the way the clouds drift across the sky, Louis journeys back downstairs to even out the score. After all, he is the man of the house (relatively speaking) and he will not stand for losing in any game he plays.

He comes in contact with Dusty yet again on his way down the attic stairs. She's lounging on the bottom step, swishing her tail back and forth sadistically, and Louis scrunches up his face and bears his makeshift fangs at her in passing, just to show her who's boss.

Following the muted sound of a boyish voice singing an unrecognizable tune, Louis is led to his old bedroom. He stops in the doorway, staring at the familiar pale blue walls and dark wooden floors. The way the curtains billow gently in the warm spring breeze bring back hazy memories of summer days, when his mum would bring glasses of freshly squeezed lemonade upstairs for him and his sisters, when everyone was happy.

Louis spots the top of Harry's curly hair across the room, kneeling down with his back to him. He's going through more _Harry's Room_ boxes, and by the looks of it, he's just started on unpacking his books. The bookshelf in front of him is empty save for a copy of the fourth Harry Potter that looks a little worse for wear. The edges of its pages are slightly worn and the colors on the dust jacket have faded to softer shades of green and yellow—the signs of a well-loved book.

Harry begins to sing a mash up of multiple songs by The Beatles, and Louis sits on the floor beside the window with his back to the wall, content to sit and watch him for a while.

Halfway through a particularly soulful rendition of Hey Jude, Harry seems to get bored of unpacking. He stands up and flops down on his bed, his arms and legs extended outwards in exhaustion. He looks the very picture of defeat.

Louis watches quietly as Harry gazes up at the square of blue visible in the skylight, exhaling loud enough to reach Louis' ears.

"I always loved looking up at the sky."

Louis doesn't even realize he's spoken aloud until he sees Harry jump, sitting up so fast that if Louis didn't know any better, he'd think he'd just been electrocuted.

"Ghosty!" Harry's eyes lock onto him, a slow smile blooming on his face. For the first time, Louis notices that he's missing one of his front teeth. "You're back!"

"I am," Louis replies with a smile of his own.

They're quiet for a moment, simply looking at each other in wonder, blue mixing with green.

"You know, this used to be my room," Louis begins to say, breaking their lengthy pause and tipping his head back to look around at the walls. Before he knows it, Harry's interrupting him, practically bubbling over with excitement.

"Are you, like, the Invisible Man?" he asks, but before Louis can even say no, Harry's making a face at himself like he just ate something sour. "I mean, of course you're not invisible, I can _see_ you," he chides himself.

Louis watches his eyebrows move down his face as if his skin is melting. Quick as a flash, Harry's smile is back and he's spitting out more questions in a rapid fire, each more ridiculous than the last. "If you eat something, will I be able to see it go through your body? Like, down your throat and into your stomach and your intestines? Can you eat macaroni? Or sweet corn? Or, wait—"

He stops abruptly, holding his hands up even though Louis had made no move to interrupt him. "When it's your birthday, do you have to get your mum to bake you a special cake? Like," he's talking slowly, as if he's trying to figure out how to phrase it. Louis can't help but sit there and blink at him in confusion, until a thought pops into Harry's head and he says, "an invisible one?"

Louis is overwhelmed by all of his questions, to say the least, so he latches onto the one that's the easiest to answer. "My mum doesn't live here anymore," he tells him. "She moved away when I changed."

The thought looks like it genuinely troubles Harry, and Louis finds himself laughing and shaking his head in disbelief. He laughs because if he doesn't laugh, he'll cry, and he refuses to cry in front of Harry. He came down here to even out the score, not put himself at an even greater disadvantage.

"Let me tell you a thing or two about how ghosts work," he says like he's making a joke, but he's only half kidding.

Harry scoots down to the end of his bed until his feet are dangling over the edge, as close to Louis as he can get, and Louis takes a moment to marvel at his fearlessness. Most people Louis knows of are afraid of ghosts, and think that they're all like the ones in scary movies, plotting out ways to kill people.

Harry though, Harry is different. He looks at Louis like they're best friends. It makes warmth flood through Louis' fingers and toes, and he has to shut his eyes for a second. When he opens them back up, he watches as Harry sets his elbows on his thighs and his chin in his hands, looking at him in unabashed curiosity like he'd listen to Louis talk until he had salt and pepper hair and his bones were old and creaky.

Louis chews at the inside of his mouth and tries to figure out the best place to start. In all honesty, he has no idea what to say, because he's never had to explain the details of ghosthood before, not to anyone. If there's one thing he knows for sure, it's that he's not going to let Harry know he's at just as much of a loss as Harry is in this situation, because _hello,_ Louis is here to _win_.

It's an unofficial game, and he doesn't even know what the prize is, but that's neither here nor there. He schools his features into something that he hopes makes him come off as calm, cool and collected, takes a deep breath, and meets Harry's expectant gaze.

"Have you ever seen a ghost before?" he asks, and when Harry shakes his head, Louis takes pride in the fact that he's Harry's first.

"Well," Louis says, then stops to collect his thoughts. "Normally, I can't be seen by anyone because I'm not alive. Animals can see me, like birds and squirrels and cats, but not people. I think it has something to do with the way their eyes work, because I don't get hit by the light 'cause I'm not solid."

It dawns on him that Harry is the only person who's ever been able to see him. The thought unsettles him more than he'd like to admit.

Harry's eyes light up like the moon. "Does that mean I'm special?" he asks.

"You're _very_ special," Louis tells him seriously, and when Harry smiles, he can't help but laugh at how weird his dimples look all smushed up against the sides of his hands. "Maybe you have magic eyes."

"Maybe I have magic eyes," Harry repeats, his eyes widening and his eyebrows raising. He presses his lips together like he's trying to fight his smile, and when he looks back at Louis, his mouth looks like a wiggly line.

Louis has nothing to say to that. They sit in a comfortable silence, Harry chewing his lip and thinking about magic eyes, probably, and Louis sneaking glance after glance at Harry while trying not to get caught.

Harry blinks out of his daze and smiles at Louis again (does he ever stop smiling?). He pokes his tongue in the gap left from his missing tooth, swinging his feet back and forth in contemplation. His heels hit his mattress with little thumps, left right left.

Suddenly, he jumps up and off his bed, sliding across the hardwood floor on his socks until he's reached one of the taped up boxes. Grabbing the box cutter, he turns and looks at Louis over his shoulder.

"Wanna see my Harry Potter wand?" he asks, running the blade down the center of the packing tape. "I got it at Disney last year."

Louis is on his feet and running over to kneel by his side before he can even think. Harry folds the flaps of the box down and digs his hands into the sea of packing peanuts.

Without any hesitation, Louis follows suit.

\--

In July, it gets so hot that they keep the air conditioning on in the house every single day. It doesn't bother Louis because he feels temperatures in lesser intensities than normal people, but it does affect Harry and his family. More often than not, they're sitting outside on lawn chairs with the neighbors or running around in bathing suits, getting soaked in water gun fights and hose wars.

The good thing about being a ghost is that he never has to take a shower ever again. He doesn't really smell like anything at all (maybe fresh air or sunlight, but nothing too special), and even if he did try to shower, he's willing to bet the water would go right through him.

Harry and Gemma come inside one afternoon giggling and dripping puddles of pool water all over the floor in the entryway. Harry's mum makes them mop it up with a set of spare towels before they're allowed to venture into the rest of the house, and Louis watches them from the top of the stairs and laughs at the way Harry nearly slips and brains himself on the coat rack by the door.

In August, the sun's heat is relentless. Sometimes Louis can actually feel it on his skin, and it makes him remember the time he got a sunburn and had to rub aloe vera into his arms every night before he went to sleep.

Harry's family takes an impromptu trip to the beach one weekend, and he and Dusty are left to form a friendship over having the house to themselves.

Louis still isn't sure if Dusty likes him or if she just tolerates him, but either way, it's much better than the hissing she's become so fond of doing whenever they come in contact with each other. They share a few glares here and there because neither of them are good at compromising, but it works.

Louis feels like the boy from Home Alone, at the part when he realizes his entire family forgot about him and he was free to do anything he wanted. He jumps on Harry's bed to his heart's content, slides down the stairs on a blanket sled, and even goes so far as to hang from the chandelier while reenacting [the part in Peter Pan](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zf00mEe9EOs) when he teaches Wendy and her brothers how to fly.

What Harry's mum doesn't know won't hurt her is basically Louis' motto for the three days the house is empty aside from him and the cat. It makes for him thinking up a bunch of plans for things his mum  _never_ would have let him get away with, but now he's a ghost and nothing can stop him.

As the days go by and summer draws to a close, Louis hears talks of the neighbors on Starlight Road planning a block party. The night before it, Harry is buzzing with excitement, and he and Louis stay up talking about all the possible things that could be there when they wake up in the morning.

It turns out there are bouncy houses and fancy sprinklers and trampolines. From what Louis can see, there are popcorn and cotton candy machines, and there's even a face painting stand set up next to the dunk tank that's run by none other than Harry's sister herself and a few of the girls from across the way. A big rock wall is propped up in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street with red and yellow footholds, and pools for apple bobbing and floating ducks and pretend fishing games litter the sidewalks and front lawns.

Louis watches through the window and thinks, if he could come back to life for just one day, he would pick this one.

\--

Harry's first day of third grade is on the fourth of September, the exact day the leaves on the trees start changing color, and Louis is convinced that it's a sign.

A sign for what, he doesn't know, but Louis doesn't believe in coincidences.

He can practically feel the waves of nervous energy wrapping Harry up from head to toe as he watches him from where he's sitting on the end of his bed. Harry is furiously digging through his drawers and trying to find something suitable to wear. Shirts of every color and jeans of every size litter the floor around his feet, slowly but surely building up into a laundry mountain.

He keeps mumbling things to himself, things like _what if I'm the only new boy?_ and _what if they hate me for wearing yellow?_ as he delves under more layers of shirts.

When Harry pulls the last shirt from the drawer and tosses it on the pile, looking like he's about five seconds away from bursting into tears, Louis finally decides to intervene.

"Harry," he says, making his voice as gentle as he can. Harry looks down at his bare feet, wiggling his toes and rolling his lips into his mouth. It doesn't take much to put two and two together and notice the tears welling up in his eyes.

Louis says the first thing that comes to mind, something along the lines of, "Do you have a favorite shirt?" that makes him immediately want to take it back and figure out something something better to say, because what's  _that_ going to do to help anything?

Miraculously, it seems to work. Harry sniffs, wiping his nose on the back of his pajama shirt and looking up at Louis through big, glassy eyes. "Yeah," he whispers, so softly that Louis would have missed it if he hadn't been watching him so closely.

Louis lets his muscles loosen with what feels a lot like relief. "Can I see what it is?" he asks, and he smiles when Harry nods. It's a hesitant nod at best, but it means Harry's attention is on him and not the impending first day of school, and that's all that matters.

Harry's toes move aside a shirt that Louis is willing to bet is too big for him. He picks up a t-shirt, black with a red neckline and blue sleeves. The words _Marvel Comics_ are printed across the middle of it in red and white letters. The classic superheroes stand proud and tall in their places scattered around the bold lettering. Louis spots Captain America holding his shield out and the Hulk clenching his fist, looking as intimidating as usual.

"If I saw you wearing that," Louis pauses for dramatic effect, "I'd want to be your friend immediately." He takes note of the way Harry's expression has slowly but surely started to brighten. "Everyone else will be amazed by it, too, I bet." He puts his hand out in the air in front of him and moves it in an arc like he's reading a billboard. "Harry, the curly-haired boy in the Marvel shirt! Harry, who can make friends faster than you can even blink!"

Harry still looks slightly apprehensive, but at least his eyes aren't flooded with tears anymore. "You really think so?" he asks, his voice higher than normal. Louis pretends not to notice, and when he nods, the corners of Harry's mouth quirk up.

He sniffs again, looking down at his shirt and holding it closer to his chest, and Louis beams with pride.

"I know so," he says quietly, all of his usual brash confidence dimmed to background noise. Harry looks up. When he smiles, his eyes nearly close shut and his nose stretches out with the force of it.

Louis would be laughing at how strange he looks if he didn't want to hug him so badly.

\--

Later that afternoon, Louis is sitting by the attic window and watching for the familiar yellow school bus, per Harry's request. He hears it before he sees it, the gentle hum of the motor and the laughter of twenty primary school students carrying through the open windows of the bus and lifting through the autumn air to meet Louis' ears.

He leans forward to watch the kids who live on Starlit Road stumble down the steps of the bus. There are two girls, Jade who likes to play around with hair colors and eye makeup, and a darker-skinned girl named Leigh-Anne, both of whom live across the street.

A ginger-haired boy named Ed steps off next. He has more freckles on his face than there are stars in the sky, and Louis is reminded of when he was in school and everyone called him Polka Dots.

Louis cranes his neck to see one boy in particular, the one with curly hair wearing a red and black Marvel t-shirt and beat up converse. The thought of seeing his best friend is causing excitement to buzz pleasantly in his veins.

When he sees him, his heart does a little jump. He's smiling wide, waving goodbye to the bus driver. Three boys call out in varying accents, "bye, Harry! See you tomorrow!" and Harry spins around, his smile growing impossibly wider, to wave at them too.

If Louis feels a tiny bit jealous of whomever it is Harry's smiling at like that, all lit up like the sun, then no one but him has to know.

Louis watches as Harry skips down the sidewalk with Ed and the girls by his side, his small hands clasped around the straps of his backpack. When the four of them are standing across from Harry's house, there's a chorus of _see you tomorrow_ , and Ed and Harry cross the street.

Louis watches as Jade and Leigh-Anne's eyes follow Harry as he walks up the path to his house.

"Bye, Harry," Leigh-Anne calls, and Louis swears she makes her voice sound  _extra_  high and pretty. He doesn't even know why she'd singled him out—hadn't their group already said their goodbyes?

All three of them wave to each other again, and Louis feels a smug smile tug at his lips when he notices that Harry doesn't reply.

When Jade leans in and whispers something in Leigh-Anne's ear, Louis' smile is wiped clean off his face. They erupt into suspicious giggles and Louis watches with a frown as both of their faces turn the bright pink color of his sisters' baby clothes.

Louis doesn't like it, not one bit.

\--

Even hours later, when Harry is telling him about the three closest friends he'd made today—the three boys who had called out to Harry from inside the bus—Louis is still unsettled by the thought of Leigh-Anne's smiling face looking at Harry with fluttery eyelashes and flushed cheeks.

"You know how you said if I wore my Marvel shirt, people would want to talk to me?" Harry's busy saying, bouncing up and down on his bed like he's on a sugar high.

"Yeah?" Louis says, not quite able to hide his unhappiness. He turns to lie on his stomach, hiding his face in the pillows, and tries to keep his bad mood at bay.

Harry, of course, is oblivious.

"You were right! Zayn was drawing comic book characters next to me in English, and he used my shirt as a reference. Liam, who's been Zayn's best friend since forever, said he wishes he had a shirt like mine, and then Niall—did I mention he moved here this summer too? All the way from _Ireland!_ —he said I should stick with them!" 

He's out of breath and wild-eyed by the time he's done talking, even though he talks slower than anyone Louis has ever known.

Louis stares very hard at the place where the wall meets the ceiling and doesn't say anything, because he knows if he does it'll come out sounding angry and mean. He just hopes he tells stories about  _him_ with this much enthusiasm.

"And there are these girls that Liam knows from summer camp," Harry continues, and Louis can sense where the conversation is going. "Perrie who's in our grade, and Jesy, Jade and Leigh-Anne in the grade above us—they were the ones picked to sing in music class, and we went over to them after and told them how good they were."

Harry takes a big breath, looking at Louis like he should be excited by the fact that Harry was in the same room with fourth grade girls. Louis distinctly remembers how big of a deal it was when he was in school for him and his friends to talk to girls,  _especially_  if they were older, but now, what Louis is feeling is as far from excited as he is to the North Pole—which is to say, _very_ far.

At the mention of Leigh-Anne he had unconsciously clenched his fists in Harry's bedspread, and he has to force himself to relax before Harry notices.

As Harry goes on about how Leigh-Anne and Jesy are both utterly  _amazing_  at tag, as he and his friends had found out later during recess, Louis can feel a very specific feeling simmering inside of him, one that he knows only goes downhill from here.

"Well, I'm glad you have new friends," he says, trying and failing to keep the biting tone out of his voice.

"I do have new friends." Harry says it with so much confidence that a spark of something dark and ugly catches in Louis' stomach. He feels the familiar pull from the attic start to swirl in his gut, and he's afraid he'll disappear until Harry looks at him in that special way he does only for Louis and whispers, "but I don't have a new _you_."

\--

Before Harry goes to school the next day, they sit on his bed and make a list of all the things Louis can do while Harry's gone. Louis didn't really tell him he'd miss him, exactly, but he thinks Harry knows anyway.

When his mum calls up the stairs that the bus is here, he shoots Louis a grin and whispers, "Don't forget about the list."

His right eye does something that vaguely resembles a wink (Louis thinks it might've just been a weird twitch, it was that fast). He adjusts the straps on his backpack and shoots Louis one last smile before he's gone.

Louis doesn't forget about the list. He draws a shapes on the window and makes up a story about a knight with a fluffy hat who's jousting with his mortal enemy. He runs as many laps around Harry's room as he can with his eyes closed, and then he seeks out Dusty and follows her around on all fours, just to see what it's like to be a cat.

After that, he looks through all of Harry's drawings taped up on the walls, taking extra care to look at every detail. Harry's really very good at drawing when he chooses to be, and he tries to remember to tell him that when he gets home from school.

It's as Louis is flipping through books about mice and ghosts and princesses that he starts to gets bored. He never was very good at being alone, and so he lies on Harry's bed and looks up through the skylight at the clouds smudged across the sky. He wonders if Harry is as bored as he is right now, if he wishes Louis were there with him.

The thought makes Louis smile.

\--

As the minute hand ticks closer and closer to three o'clock, Louis starts getting restless.

The neon stars stuck to Harry's ceiling are looking particularly droopy today, and Louis decides to fix them. He stacks up Harry's pillows on his bed like a staircase and steps up to the top one. When gravity pulls on his arms and legs and makes him tilt to the right against his will, he has to hold the top of the bed frame for support. He stretches his arm up as far as it will go, spreading his fingers out as they near the ceiling, and just as he's about to reach the corner of the biggest star, his leg kicks out and slams into the lamp on Harry's bedside table.

Louis looks down, keeping his leg suspended in midair. For one terrifying moment, the lamp wobbles back and forth like a pendulum, and Louis keeps his body as frozen as he can.

Just when he thinks it's safe to move again, he spots the pile of marbles Harry got for Christmas last year. They're dangerously close to the edge, and the only coherent thought that runs through Louis' head is a four letter word he's not allowed to say.

He lets go of the bed frame and dives to the floor, his hands cupped out to catch them, but he's too late. They smack against the floor, one after the other like hail raining down from the sky, loud enough that Louis swears the people across the Atlantic could hear it if they strain their ears hard enough.

He winces, praying that Harry's mum is out running errands or gardening in the backyard, but sure enough he hears her footsteps start up the stairs.

Louis flips into panic mode. His brain is too wired to realize that she won't be able to see him, and he gets so anxious that he disappears with a _pop!_  up into the attic. 

 _Too close,_ Louis thinks to himself, slumping against the wall with a sigh. Too close.

\--

By the time Harry gets home, Louis has forgotten all about the marble fiasco and is napping in the sunlight pouring in through the attic window. It's quite peaceful, and Louis is nearly dozing when all of a sudden, there's a thump and a shout of "Ghosty!"

Louis' eyes snap open. Harry is crouched down right in front of him, so close that their noses are almost touching. With a jolt, Louis scoots back until he hits the wall behind him, adrenalin pumping through his veins and making the hair on his arms stand up.

" _Jesus_ _!_ " he squawks, hating the way he sounds out of breath. He stubbornly ignores the way a scoreboard is inching its way into his mind. "I was almost asleep!"

Harry rolls his eyes at him because they both know that's a lie. "Did you move things in my room?" he says, buzzing with excitement.

Louis blinks at him for a moment, eyelids still heavy from the sun warming his skin up like an electric blanket. "Did I what?"

"Move things in my room," Harry repeats, smiling. He holds out his hands. Louis can see bits of color through the gaps in his fingers. "I found these on the floor," he says, and Louis is confused for half a second before his face is turning pink against his will.

Harry grins with a knowing look in his eyes.

\--

It sort of becomes a game after that.

Louis moves bits and pieces around while Harry’s away at school, and when Harry comes home, he has to find what's different.

One day Louis switches all the black checkers on Harry's checkerboard with red ones, and another day he rearranges the pencils and pens in the cup on Harry’s desk by shape and size so they look like a wave.

They’re just little changes that any ordinary person would never notice, but Louis has come to realize that Harry is not ordinary.

The thing about Harry that baffles Louis is that he's  _always_ good. Like, on one hand, Louis understands because when he was good and did something without having to be told, his mum would slip him an extra brownie for dessert or let him stay up past his bedtime. But with Harry, it's different. He does things out of the good of his heart whether he's asked to or not, and he's always putting other people's happiness before his own to the point where Louis literally cannot think of a time he's heard him get in trouble.

Louis has heard Harry's mum yell at Gemma for leaving the cap off the nail polish bottle overnight, or for forgetting to change the litter box three days in a row, or for using up all her cell phone credit from texting her friends at 3 am, but Harry never seems to do anything  _wrong_. He's just a genuinely good person—the best person Louis has ever met—and that's all there is to it.

\--

The weirdest thing about Harry is how he notices _everything,_  like he has a sixth sense. Louis thinks maybe it might have something to do with Harry's magic eyes.

On Thursday, when Louis is practicing holding things in his hands because he's slowly becoming able to hold heavier things without them falling through his fingers, he accidentally switches the order of the crayons in Harry’s Crayola box.

Somehow Harry knows, and when Louis' eyes catch on the box the next day, there's a note stuck to the top of it that says _I like my crayons in color order, Ghosty_ with a little smiley face and an H drawn on the bottom.

Louis holds onto the note for the rest of the day and doesn't stop smiling.

\--

The day that Harry begins to figure out Louis’ name is entirely an accident.

Louis had gotten bored of standing in front of the bathroom mirror with a hairbrush in his hands and pretending to be Elvis Presley, and instead had taken an interest in Harry's rock collection, because _of course_ Harry has a rock collection. Why wouldn't he?

He’s lined up five of the rocks going down in a line and is just adding the finishing touches to the foot of his L when he hears the soles of Harry's sneakers slapping up the stairs. With a glance at the clock he connects the dots. Harry's home from school. Louis doesn't have any time to do anything except dash behind the curtains a split second before Harry’s bedroom door flies open.

“Ghosty,” Harry sings, drawing out the vowel sounds and spinning circles across the floor with his arms stretched out like a windmill. He twirls over to his bed, sets his backpack down, and looks up.

The sunlight shining through the window paints Harry's skin in speckles and spots, and he looks like he could blend in with the trees outside. Louis can't help but stare, because Harry just looks _so_ pretty.

He always looks so pretty that if Louis weren't already dead, he swears he would have suffered a traumatic heart attack at least seven times since June.

Harry’s eyes roam around his room, looking for whatever Louis has misplaced today. He almost skips over the rocks on the floor, too excited to think to look that close to the ground, but when he sees them he jumps up like he’s been stung by a bee and trips over himself to get a closer look.

Louis watches as Harry sits down, careful not to disturb the rock formation. He reaches out a tentative hand and traces the rocks one by one. “L,” he says out loud, his eyebrows scrunching up to match the way his shirt sleeves are gathered at his elbows. He repeats the letter again and then another time, and Louis can practically see the gears and levers working in overdrive in his brain as he tries to figure out what it means.

“L is for lions and lemons and lightning bugs,” Harry says, counting off the words on his fingers as he goes, "licorice and lavender, lampshades and lakes and Labrador retrievers."

When he can't think of any more L words, his lips purse out and his eyes narrow in thought, and Louis has to cover his mouth with his hand to stop his laughs from escaping him.

As if Harry can sense that he’s not anywhere close to figuring out what it means, he huffs, resting his elbows on his crossed knees and his chin in his hands, looking the picture of frustration.

Louis suddenly feels bad for laughing, and just as he’s about to give him a hint, Harry’s eyes light up. He looks straight at Louis like he knew he was there all along, and trepidation seeps into Louis' bones.

“Does your name begin with L?” he asks, his voice too loud like he already knows the answer. "Is that what it means?"

Instead of saying _yes_  out loud, Louis crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue.

Harry catches the hidden meaning—of course he does. A smile the size of the sun spreads across his face, his eyes almost closing shut with how pleased he is, and something warm fills up in Louis’ stomach like he’s just drank a hot cup of tea in one gulp.

He disappears back up to the attic with a fond smile on his lips and a buzz reaching all the way down to his toes.

\--

“They don’t think you’re real,” Harry says one Friday in October, crossing his arms over his chest and pouting his bottom lip out, just like he had on the very first day Louis saw him.

He just looks so grumpy like that, with his hair a curly mess sticking out around his ears and his eyes widened like a bush baby's, that Louis falls back on the bed laughing.

It only serves to make Harry pout even more. “They don’t!” he says, scooting up the mattress to sit closer to Louis. He looks down on him with his fat bottom lip still sticking out. “Whenever I talk about you, Mum just smiles like she thinks I’m making up a story, and Gem—Gemma is the _worst!_ —she always says you’re my imaginary friend! _Imaginary!_ "

At this point he sounds absolutely outraged, his curly hair bouncing every time he shakes his head back and forth in disbelief. "I’ve never even _had_ an imaginary friend before," he protests, "and I don’t want one. I don’t _need_ one,” he corrects himself with a careful glance at Louis from underneath his eyelashes. “You’re very, very real.”

“Am I?” Louis grins up at Harry and wiggles his fingers in front of his face.

Harry makes a noise that resembles a wounded wolf’s howl, diving under the blankets. He faces away from Louis and tugs the blankets up to cover his face. “Not you, too!” he whines indignantly, and Louis would feel bad if he weren’t too busy laughing. “They really, seriously don’t believe in you!”

Harry pokes his face out from under the quilt, looking at him over his shoulder. His eyebrows are furrowed up like little caterpillars. “You’re my best friend. They _have_ to believe in you.”

Louis’ laughter dies down at that. He reaches his hand out to smooth Harry’s hair back from where it had fallen into his eyes. “But that’s okay,” he says, smiling. “As long as you believe in me, that’s all that matters, right?

Harry huffs out a half-hearted, “I guess,” rolling over to face the ceiling. He still looks upset, so Louis does the thing he does best.

“Wanna know a secret?” he says, beckoning him closer like he’s about to spill the beans on how the world can spin around the sun every day and never get tired.

Harry leans in, so close that Louis can feel his breath on his face when he whispers, “what?”

Before he can even get his sentence out, Louis’ eyes are already scrunched up into delighted little half moons. “You’re my _bestest_  friend,” he sings, poking Harry's side.

Harry scoffs, whacking him in the arm with an open fist. Louis’ laughter nearly covers up his soft, indignant, “but that's not a secret! I already knew that!”

And later, when the sun has set behind the trees and they're lying on their backs, staring up at the stars visible through the skylight, Louis turns to Harry to find that he's already looking at him, blinking back the tug of sleep with tired eyes.

"You want me to tell you what I was _really_ gonna say?" he asks quietly, and Harry nods before he even hears the end of his question. Louis starts to rethink it and tell himself this is a bad idea, but then Harry's looking at him in that special way that he only does for him, and suddenly all of Louis' unease melts away.

"My name's Louis," he whispers.

The only parts of Harry's face he can see through the shadows are his eyes. They're staring at him, as wide as the ocean, for what feels like a million years, and when he says his name out loud for the very first time, it's nothing more than a breath of air into the dead of the night. A galaxy explodes in Louis' belly, because if Harry keeps saying his name like that, everything will be okay.

\--

Halloween falls on a Friday, and Louis steels himself for sitting alone by the window while Harry and his friends go out and paint the town red in their homemade costumes.

That's why it comes as such a surprise when Harry says out of the blue, "Oh, I'm not going trick-or-treating, I'm staying home with you," like it's something that's blatantly obvious.

Louis' mouth falls open in surprise.

"You're  _what?_ "

"I'm staying home with you," Harry repeats. He starts giggling when all Louis does is stare at him. "Louis," he laughs, making a buzzing noise, "you're going to catch flies."

"I am _not_ ," Louis says, snapping his mouth shut. "Now what's this about you ditching Halloween to be cooped up in here, instead of being out there getting heaps of candy?" He waves a hand in the direction of the window, completely dumbfounded, because if he were Harry he'd be out the door the moment he had his costume on.

"I don't need heaps of candy," Harry says, "and I'm not _ditching_ Halloween, I'm spending time with _you_." He waits to gauge Louis' reaction to that, and when he makes no move to interrupt, Harry continues. "I've been thinking about how you can't go trick-or-treating since you can't go outside, and that's not fair at all, is it? So I found a way for both of us to have fun; we stay here instead and watch scary movies!"

"But you can watch scary movies any day, Harry," Louis protests. "Halloween only comes around once a year."

Harry rolls his eyes like Louis is missing the point and chooses to ignore him entirely. "I found some Halloween decorations in my closet from last year. If they still work right, they'll glow in the dark. You'll help me set up a haunted blanket fort, right?"

As it turns out, Harry gets his way.

When the sun begins to set and the trick-or-treaters come out from hiding, they plug in a string of leftover Halloween lights that Harry finds buried in the back of his closet. It has grinning jack-o-lanterns and smiling candy corns, and there are even a few ghosts and gravestones, much to Louis' delight.

They line up piles of books and chairs into a makeshift maze, and Louis is _it_  while Harry tries his best to remember the layout and make it to the end before Louis catches him.

When they get bored of that, Harry gathers up all the flashlights and candles he can find while Louis builds his best attempt at a blanket fort. They turn off all the lights, and the glows of the flickering candles cast shadows on the sheets.

Harry convinces Louis to let him eat chocolate from his secret stash, and Louis makes him describe the tastes to him without using words like  _candy_ or  _chocolate_ or  _sweets_. It turns out that Harry is absolutely horrendous at the game, and Louis laughs so hard that he has stitches in his sides by the time the clock strikes midnight.

It's the best Halloween he's ever had.

\--

Winter sneaks up on Louis without any warning. The last remaining leaves on the trees outside the attic window seem to be blown off in a fierce gust of wind overnight, and before he knows it, it's Christmas.

Harry sneaks Louis mugs of hot chocolate on Christmas Eve, even though he knows he won't be able to drink them. They have red and white sprinkles and marshmallows on top, and there's even a peppermint stick for Louis to swirl. Harry hands it to him carefully, and the gesture is just so Harry that it puts a permanent smile on Louis' face.

The next time he sees him, he's holding a piece of paper behind his back. His face is pink and his smile is bashful, and Louis can't help but find it hopelessly endearing.

"I made you something," Harry says.

Louis looks at him for a moment, just marveling at the way the fairy lights that they'd strung up along the sloping walls of the ceiling play over Harry's face in patches of red and green and blue. The slope of his nose and the bow of his lips are cast in shadow, and the lights catch in his eyelashes every time he blinks. Louis wishes he could take a picture of him.

"You did?" Louis asks, unable to speak in anything louder than a whisper, for fear it'll shatter the fragility of the moment.

Harry nods, biting his lip and slowly unveiling the paper from behind his back. "It makes me sad to think that you don't have any family with you, no one to give you presents, so I got Zayn to help me because he's good at art and I wanted you to get at least one present on Christmas."

Louis' throat begins to close up like it does when he's about to cry. "Let me see, then," he says softly, taking the paper in his hands.

At first, Louis can't make out what it is from the reflection of the lights on the page, so he holds it up to look at it more closely. I's not a sketch of Santa's reindeer or a holiday card like Louis had expected for it to be, and when he realizes what he's looking at, it feels like the world stops for a second and everything narrows down to right here, right now.

It's a painting of two boys standing in front of a window, looking down on snow-covered roofs with their arms stretched towards each other. The window looks just like the one a few feet away from them. It's dark around the edges of the picture, and at the very center where the light seems to be coming from, the boys are holding hands.

"That's us," Harry whispers, reaching out a hand to point at the page. "This one is me," he says, his finger traces the outline of the shorter one, "and that one is you."

He's painted Louis in silver, and the only bits of color on him are his eyes, blue like the sky.

Harry starts to fidget like he's unsure of himself when Louis has been quiet for too long, too caught up in staring at all the tiny details Harry's put into the painting, and that just won't do.

" _Harry_." Louis tries to put all of his emotions into that one word, and from the way Harry's eyes soften and his lips curve up, it works.

Together, they tack it up on the wall beside the attic window. Louis spends the entire night staring at it with a smile.

\--

In January, deep into the night when the world is silent and still, Louis hears footsteps on the stairs. Even before he hears the whisper, he knows it’s Harry.

“Louis,” his soft voice sounds through the door. “Louis, it’s me, I—" his sentence is broken up by what sounds suspiciously like a sob, followed by the rustling of his shirt rubbing across his face.

“Harry,” Louis whispers, shuffling over to sit back against the attic door. "It's late, shouldn't you be asleep?”

There’s another sniff and a few seconds of silence before Harry’s voice, still shaking, whispers, "I had a nightmare.”

Louis bites his lip and tries desperately to remember what he used to do when his sisters would come to him in the middle of the night, crying and afraid, just like Harry is now. He’s quiet for long enough that Harry speaks up again.

“Please open the door, Lou, I need—I hope it doesn't sound dumb, but I think it would help if you—" He cuts himself off again, like he's scared to speak his mind, and Louis feels fondness burn faintly in his belly.

"Harry," he whispers, "just say it, go ahead. I won't think it's dumb."

He hears Harry take a deep breath before he's saying in a rush, "Can you hug me?”

And Louis’ brain must still be syrupy slow from the quiet of the dark attic because it takes him a moment to process what Harry’s said. When it clicks into place, all Louis is capable of doing is blinking dumbly at the still closed door in shock. His brain feels fuzzy, like someone’s just stuffed cotton balls in his ears. “Can I what?”

“Hug me,” Harry says again, louder this time, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. "I've never hugged you before, but you're my very best friend in the whole wide world, and best friends are supposed to hug, right? Liam and Zayn hug all the time."

Louis slowly stands up, a smile spreading across his face as his hand reaches for the doorknob. When he slowly eases the door open, Harry’s mouth immediately snaps closed like he's a ventriloquist dummy.

“That was a lovely speech,” he says, taking delight in the way Harry’s cheeks flush a pink to match the color of his puffy eyes. “Very lovely. The most lovely. The loveliest speech I have ever heard in my entire life.”

"Thanks," Harry whispers.

Louis smiles at him, watching as Harry sucks his bottom lip into his mouth and blinks his pretty doe eyes, swaying side to side. 

“How about that hug?” he says.

As they lean in, Louis crosses his fingers behind his back and fights the fear that it won't work, that Harry's arms will pass through him like he's nothing more than a silhouette. He doesn't really believe in God, but he takes a moment to think up a message for the big guy upstairs that ultimately just ends up being _please let me hug Harry please please please_.

He thinks it’ll have to do.

 ****When Harry's arms wrap around him, Louis feels this earth-shattering flood of relief. He sinks into Harry's embrace and nudges his nose into Harry's neck. His skin is warm like the heat of a crackling fire, and his wild curls tickle the sides of Louis' face. He can smell the fabric softener on Harry's clothes and the faint trace of shampoo in his hair. The wet patches on Harry's shirt left by his tears are drying, slowly but surely, like a promise.

Harry is solid and reassuring and  _real_ , and Louis couldn't ask for anything more.

\--

The air is warmer and the trees are starting to bud again. Harry gets home from school one afternoon and says to him out of the blue, "my friends want to meet you."

Louis looks up from where he'd been watching Dusty chase her tail around in circles. He must look completely dumbfounded, because Harry laughs.

"Why?" is all Louis can think to say, because he hadn't even realized that Harry's friends knew about him, let alone were curious enough to see him in person.

"I tell them stories about you," Harry shrugs, "and they've never met a ghost before." He says it like it's a normal, everyday thing.

Louis makes a noise that sounds like a cross between a deflating balloon and the whistle of a tea kettle and stares at him like he's gone completely insane. "You talk about me at school?" He feels lightheaded all of a sudden, and he sits down on the end of Harry's bed.

Harry has the grace to blush. "Well, yeah," he says, looking at everything aside from Louis. "I bring up your name in conversation a lot and always forget that they don't know who you are, so Zayn eventually stopped me to ask who this _Louis_ person was. When I told him that you were the ghost who lived in my house, Niall found it absolutely hilarious and demanded I let you meet him."

Even before Harry's through with his explanation, Louis is laughing.

"I take it you invited them over, then?"

Harry nods, looking pleased. A thought seems to hit him and his expression sobers into one that's more serious. "I'm not even sure if they'll be able to see you." He looks so distraught over the possibility that it causes an ache in Louis' chest.

"I'm sure they will," he says, choosing his words carefully. "As long as they believe in me, they should be okay." He's trying to calm Harry down, but it seems to do the opposite.

"But what if they don't?" Harry's eyes are flitting all over the room anxiously. "What if they can't see you and they think I've made you up, like mum and Gemma do?"

"Harry," Louis says seriously, offering him a smile to try and smooth out Harry's frown. "I promise you, it'll be _fine_."

That seems to placate Harry for a minute or two, but then he's back to the incessant questioning as if he'd never stopped.

"Are you sure you're not mad?" Harry says, always one to jump to the worst conclusion. "I know I should've asked if it was okay with you before I asked my mum, but I honestly didn't even think of it. Sometimes I forget you're not friends with them already, because Niall will laugh at your jokes for sure, and Liam likes comic books just as much as you do. Even Zayn would realize how great you are once he gets over his shyness."

Louis remains quiet, pretending to think it over when in reality he knows he'll never be able to say no to Harry, even if he was in the middle of a life or death situation.

"They're really great," Harry tries again, leaning forward unconsciously in his eagerness to convince Louis. "We formed a collectors club and from the sound of it, they kind of want you to join, maybe?" He winces like it's a bad thing, and Louis feels fondness well up inside him. "I promise you'll like them, but if you don't want to meet them then I understand. I'll just say—"

"Hey," Louis stops him and sits up straight. He looks right into Harry's eyes, leaving no room for uncertainty. "You don't have to tell them anything," he says, "aside from the fact that I have a really sick collection of stuff from when my Grandpa was in the war."

"Really?" Harry is quick to ask. His eyes widen when Louis nods. "Is that a yes, then?"

"Of course it's a yes, dummy!"

Harry rolls his eyes, but Louis can tell that he's not upset anymore from the way a smile is leaking through his pout.

"And besides," Louis teases him, "I've been getting tired of you and your curly hair. I need some new faces around here."

\--

As it turns out, they don't hate Louis. In fact, it's way on the other side of the spectrum. They can see Louis just fine—much to both Louis and Harry's relief—and he can't remember the last time he was this happy.

Niall is an absolute  _riot_ , to say the least. He'd been the first one to spot Louis when they came home from school, and without any hesitation he'd dashed over with his arms outstretched like he was diving in for a hug. He'd flown right through Louis, of course, and had fallen straight to the floor thanks to his momentum. Instead of being frightened like Louis had thought he would, he'd taken to cackling at his own mistake.

Liam and Zayn, on the other hand, were a bit more hesitant. Once they'd gotten over their initial shock, they'd stepped slowly into the room, like Louis was some sort of frightened animal that would made a run for it at any sudden movements.

"This is Louis," Harry had said unnecessarily with a wave of his hand, "my ghost friend."

Liam looked at him with a bit of apprehension and introduced himself in a way that was so awkwardly formal that Louis had to hold back a laugh. Predictably, it takes Zayn a bit to get used to the way Louis' skin is a shimmery, pearly white color and his edges are undefined, smudged as if he's been plucked out of an old, faded photograph.

Louis can feel his gaze on him longer than any of the other boys. His wary eyes and careful smiles are enough to put Louis on edge, until Harry makes a ghost joke that's literally the worst one Louis has  _ever_  heard.

It breaks the ice enough for Zayn to grin at him, and he moves to nudge Louis in the arm before he realizes Louis isn't much more than air. It only serves to make them laugh even harder.

After that, they get on like a house on fire.

Liam had brought Uno, and since there are five of them, Louis decides to play on both teams and ignores the accusation that him being a ghost means he has the upper hand in the land of card games.

He ends up helping Harry and Niall a  _tiny_  bit more than he helps their opposing team, because  _maybe_  he's a little bias and keeps whispering for them to hold off on playing their Plus Four card until Liam and Zayn are down to their last green, but whatever.

"So," Niall says suddenly through a mouthful of multicolored chocolate, "who wants to get this collectors club party started?"

After a chorus of agreements ranging in enthusiasm, with Harry's being the most and Zayn's being the least, each of them pull out plastic bags, all of which are full to the brim with random knick-knacks and keepsakes.

Louis, having never been to one of these meetings before, sort of just sits there and watches everything unfold. They all form a circle on the rug in the middle of Harry's room, Niall and Liam dumping their bags down unceremoniously while Harry and Zayn are a bit more careful with upending their items onto the floor.

When Zayn turns to Louis to ask if he has anything he wants to trade, Liam whispers, "don't be silly, Zayn, he's a _ghost_."

Harry and Louis share a secret smile from opposite sides of the circle, and Louis proudly goes up into the attic and brings down an old box that looks like it'll fall apart at any moment. When Louis unclasps the top of it, postcards and rusty old sand dollars slide out, along with a fragile glass key chain and stamps stuck to a letter that came in the mail all the way from Australia.

Niall, Zayn, and Liam take turns oohing and ahhing, and when Louis looks up, it's to see Harry watching him with a smile on his face and that special look in his eyes.

\--

Later, when they're all smushed together in a tiny twin-sized bed, Harry and Louis are the only two still awake. They sit in silence and stare up at the stars with stripes of moonlight painting their skin.

Louis tilts his head to look over at Harry, and that special look is still shining in his eyes.

When Harry reaches out to take Louis' hand, his fingers don't pass through him like they're supposed to. Their fingers tangle together, silver against pale skin, and Louis is the most complete he's ever been.

They may grow up and out, but they'll never change who they are, here and now. They'll never lose sight of each other.

Harry looks down at their hands, then out at the three boys sleeping around them, and when he smiles, Louis knows  _exactly_  what he's thinking. This is how it's meant to be.

 

**Author's Note:**

> well done, you made it!
> 
> this fic is my baby and quite possibly the most words i've ever written in a one month time frame, so thank you for reading it! it means a lot.
> 
> drop me a comment below or message me over on [tumblr](http://hazaesthetic.tumblr.com) if you want to talk about baby ghosts and/or cry over louis and harry. i'm always up for brainstorming sessions!
> 
> here's the [tumblr post](http://hazaesthetic.tumblr.com/post/132816692850/oblivion-by-theseblueskies-word-count-11987) for this fic as well, if anyone would like to look at it :)
> 
> have a lovely day! ♡ ♡ ♡


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